FEEDFEED at SXSW 2017

feedfeed at sxsw

2017 Austin, TX

We’ve always had a soft place in our hearts for Texas, with Julie having grown up there, and Austin in particular with its adventurous food-centric ways. For the last couple of years, we have done what many companies do when March rolls around, which is kick ourselves that we didn’t plan far enough ahead to come to SXSW. We were fortunate enough to bump into a SXSW rep at the Food Loves Tech Conference in June 2016, which is hosted by Edible Manhattan & Vayner Media. She ended becoming a terrific asset in giving us a bit of the SXSW lay of the land and a sense of how feedfeed could best fit into what without planning, is a little like showing up at NYC’s JFK airport in NY as an immigrant without a plan (which essentially is what I did with my family in 1979).

Risking the pitfalls of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, we insisted that we needed to find a way to plan feedfeed’s SXSW presence our way. This included resisting the temptation to just get a small booth in a crowded trade show. Staying true to our roots, we wanted to convey what we stand for, i.e. community, imagery, and culinary inspiration, that propel a food media company fueled by the world’s largest crowdsourced/curated publication and epicurean influencer network. To pull that off, we split up feedfeed’s SXSW activation into a multi touchpoint experience that consisted of a variety of community centric efforts.

THE FEEDFEED FOOD MEDIA LOUNGE

March 11, 12, 13 We chose the Driskill Hotel as our home base, a pillar in Austin’s history, and home to SXSW Interactive’s Food Track. The feedfeed media lounge would occupy a central spot amongst the Food Track conference rooms, and gave visitors a glimpse into feedfeed’s highly curated content on all digital and social platforms, our various social media communities/accounts on Instagram, our Live content on Snapchat, Instagram Stories and Facebook live, as well as the kind of campaigns we create and distribute for our brand partners as we leverage our own photography/video/culinary content creation team and the talents of the 1000s of influencers/content creators we work with. We ran various immersive videos illustrating these components of feedfeed throughout the room.

THE FEEDFEED INFLUENCER MARKETING MEETUP & PANEL DISCUSSION

You mention the word “influencer”, and crowds will surface, at least at SXSW :). Hopeful to have a small meetup of around 50 people to kick off our SXSW presence with a preview of our lounge and a short discussion, it turned into an RSVP list of over 2000, which led to a small panic, but we were able to work with SXSW and the Driskill to secure the large Mezzanine space to welcome a crowd that surpassed 500. The energetic crowd included members of our influencer network (both from Austin and beyond), content creators, brands in a variety of verticals, technology companies, and agency reps, to have a casual conversation about best practices in influencer marketing and content creation in the food/lifestyle segments.

THE TAKEAWAY

The takeaway of course included several mentions of authenticity, engagement and narrative voice, but kidding aside, one of the more important points we wanted to convey is that for us, the term “influencer” does not fully reflect what we feel brings real value to brands. Influence can have an ambiguous connotation of exerting control and that is contrary to what we feel about the content creators in our Influencer Network...rather...the influence they yield is by the virtue of creating good content that is honest and truly provides value to their audience which is the core of how one can expect real engagement and trust between content creator, audience, and a brand that wants to natively and authentically find its way into that dynamic.

Also, what we at feedfeed like to emphasize in regards to putting brands and influencers together, is not just the brokering of that relationship, but an ongoing role in the creative direction throughout the process, both during the strategic planning phase, content creation/production as well as during content distribution/amplification.

SXSW FOOD + TECH STARTUP SPOTLIGHT

We were excited to have SXSW invite us to host a booth at this event which was billed as “Come see, touch & TASTE the latest Food + Tech products that are striving to build us a happier, healthier, safer and more sustainable world. Join the party complete with food, drinks & engaging demos from the latest startups on the cutting edge of this Food + Tech revolution.” We were given a prime, albeit slightly awkward location by the entrance which led to many people thinking it was our event, but nonetheless, a great spot to offer our feedfeed tote bags and hats to participants :) and show off our food videos and live Vitamix demo.

THE FEEDFEED PARTY AT BACKBEAT

To kickoff our party at @BackbeatATX, a beautifully designed bar/eatery with rooftop deck and cozy booths, we started with a custom cocktail combining two of our brand partners, Vitamix, and Icelandic Provisions. Get the recipe HERE!

We also had some fun thanks to our friends from MyEventIsTheBomb who provided an interactive photobooth which led to this!

A special thanks goes out to Resplendent Hospitality, our Austin PR team who helped us with countless logistics, as well as our awesome local Austin photographer (who happens to hail from Brooklyn), Mackenzie Smith.